On 19th October 1893, three days after the premiere of
his Sixth Symphony in St Petersburg, Tchaikovsky
wrote to Willem Kes, the founder and principal
conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in
Amsterdam, to accept an invitation to conduct the
orchestra there in March the following year. Six days
later, however, the composer died, leaving Willem
Mengelberg, who took over the direction of the
orchestra in 1895, to advance the composer's fortunes
both in Holland and internationally.

The new symphony formed part of the opening
concert of the Russian Musical Society's symphonic
season and was eagerly awaited by everyone in a city
that particularly revered Tchaikovsky. Initial reaction,
however, both on the part of the players themselves at
the rehearsals and the musical cognoscenti, who
thronged the hall, was unexpectedly ambivalent and
muted. After the concert, Tchaikovsky expressed
misgivings to his fellow composer Alexander Glazunov
that the musicians had not liked the symphony, but this
customary sense of immediate post-performance
disappointment soon gave way to an appreciation that
the work had puzzled rather than provoked active
dislike. As with so many of his previous creations, the
composer fully realised the fundamental quality of what
he had written and very quickly regained the high
ground convinced that he had never written anything
better.

Whether the initial public bewilderment stemmed
from the overtly personal nature of the piece or the
groundbreaking structure and devices of the outer
movements particularly, the composer himself was
never to learn, but he did have time to reflect upon
Rimsky-Korsakov's post-concert enquiry regarding a
possible programme for the symphony. Having rebuffed
too detailed a public expose of what lay behind the
piece, Tchaikovsky responded positively to the
generalised epithet of Pathetique, suggested by his
brother Modest the day after the premiere. Whatever the
subsequent vagaries and hesitations (the composer
asked his publisher Jurgenson not to add the subtitle,
but just to engrave a dedication to his close friend and
nephew Vladimir (Bob) Davidov, the name Pathetique
stuck, probably owing to active promotion by Modest,
who coincidentally was also closely acquainted with
Mengelberg.

In the early decades of the twentieth century the
works of Richard Strauss, Mahler and Tchaikovsky
were central to the Dutch conductor's repertoire and
burgeoning career. Mengelberg's points of contact were
personal and especially sympathetic in all three cases.
The last three symphonies of Tchaikovsky remained
works with which he maintained and developed a
special affinity throughout his long career. Although he
recorded the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies with the
Concertgebouw Orchestra for Columbia in 1929 and
1928 respectively, with the waltz from the Serenade as
a fill-up to the Fifth, the Sixth Symphony was not
recorded commercially until 1938. This later
Telefunken recording was set down very soon after, in
1941, just prior to the personnel changes imposed upon
the orchestra after the Nazi occupation of Holland.
There has been some debate over the years as to
whether in fact Mengelberg only recorded the finale
again owing to dissatisfaction about the relatively swift
tempo of the earlier interpretation, which is some two
minutes faster. Historical evidence and the matrix
numbers would seem to argue conclusively that it was a
completely new recording.

The extraordinarily wide and vivid dynamic range
of the 1941 sound certainly supports the argument.
Although the woodwind section as a whole is slightly
recessed within the overall perspective, individual solos
resound with the warmth and bloom characteristic of
one of the most distinctive concert halls ever built. By
this time of course, Mengelberg and his players knew
instinctively from long experience how to balance to
optimum benefit at every turn in this particular venue; a
matter of crucial importance in a work such as the
Pathetique that makes such consistently striking play of
the contrast between string, wind and brass choirs. The
quality of the result can be heard right at the start of the
symphony with an unusually clear delineation of the
cello and bass accompaniment of the bassoon solo. The
composer's iconic representation of fate by the
descending scale is immediately audible, ripe for
development and colouring much of what follows.

In more general terms, however, Tchaikovsky's
highly subjective musical language came custom-built
for Mengelberg's special talents. The matching of
interpretative flexibility to expressive content signals
meticulously prepared scores and thorough, detailed
rehearsal. As ever, the trick is to summon communal
spontaneity in performance, which both the symphony
and Serenade fully deliver. A salient example of the
skill and success of this distinctive Mengelberg device
are the three statements of the famous lyrical second
subject material in the first movement of the symphony.
Its first appearance, tender, muted, yet gently pleading
is played relatively straight and with no sentimentality.
After a transition in which Mengelberg deftly conducts
contrasted themes at two slightly different tempi to
create a subtle question and answer interplay, the forte
restatement of the subject prior to the development now
deploys more obvious passion. String portamento is
more lavish, yet unexaggerated and full tone is perfectly
tailored to structural positioning and emotional force.
Its third incarnation, when the development is spent (but
not histrionically overplayed), is the most intense of all,
but also significantly shot through with hope, thereby
overshadowing the nagging resignation of the brief
coda and providing the perfect springboard to the
following movement.

This degree of perception remains rare in
Tchaikovsky and places Mengelberg firmly among his
greatest interpreters. Flexibility never becomes merely
eccentric, self-regarding or stylistically alien, as it could
with Furtwangler's Tchaikovsky performances. Nor
does he court the more objective constrictions of
Toscanini specifically in the Pathetique. Mengelberg
has similar discipline and attack in abundance, but at the
service of a more beautifully proportioned expressive
force contained within the broad subjective and
dynamic extremes of the work as a whole.

As a work, the emotional pitch of the delightful
Serenade for Strings is at a lower temperature, but
Mengelberg taps into its distinctive style with energy
and charm, alert to all the delectable elegance and
contrapuntal dexterity that frequently draw the piece
close to the composer's best ballet scores.

The highly personal stamp of Mengelberg's
performances may well not be to contemporary tastes
and not always how we want to hear the piece at any
given time, but as an honest response to the essence of
the music and for the quality of execution, he continues
to put most competition in the shade.